Account and switching banks

Towards the end of the list sits o mealheiro digital, and the noun under it is much older than any bank. O mealheiro is the piggy bank, and its name says what goes inside: as mealhas. A mealha was a real coin, one of the smallest there was, and the word goes back to the Latin medalia, a piece worth half of another, built on medius, middle or half. That coin name travelled without ever losing the idea of a half. It became medaglia in Italian, then médaille in French, and reached English as « medal » — so the word an English reader keeps for a ribbon and a podium is the same word that names the tin a child in Lisbon drops coins into. French kept the coin itself as maille, the half-penny still standing in sans sou ni maille, without a penny to one’s name. « Piggy bank » carries none of this, which is why O mealheiro digital guarda o troco arredondado repays a second reading: the rounded-up change really is being dropped in among the small coins.